Chapter 14 PowerPoint
By: Curtis Rich and Will Warner
Objective #1
Q: Why is water so important, how much freshwater is available
to us, and how much of it are we using?
• A: Water is important to us because it is needed for all life to exist.
Without it, no life would exist on Earth. Only 0.024% of earth’s water
supply is available to us as liquid freshwater, and we are using 85% of that
for irrigation, personal use, and for industry use.
Objective #2
Q: What causes freshwater shortages, and what can be done about
this problem?
•A: Freshwater shortages are due to the wasting of water that us as
humans do daily. We can reduce this by managing how much we use on a
regular basis.
Objective #3
Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of withdrawing groundwater?
•A: The advantages of withdrawing groundwater is that doing so provides
clean drinking water for people and can be used for other uses as well. A
disadvantage of using groundwater is that it removes water from aquifers
and we are pumping this groundwater out faster than the aquifer can
replenish it, so eventually we would run out of water.
Objective #4
Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of using dams and reservoirs to supply
more water?
A: The Advantages of building Dams is that it controls the water running through a specific river.
Building the Dam will stop the river flooding and destroying people's living areas.
Not only does it provide protection from certain areas, it also provides H.E.P (Hydro-Electric
Power) which gives millions of people cheap electricity.
But the problem with Dams is that they are extremely expensive to build and maintain. It would
take several decades to make a profit out of it.
Objective #5
Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of transferring large
quantities of water from one place to another?
• A: One of the most common complaints people have come across in industry
is that water is highly corrosive: it eventually dissolves almost anything, and
causes physical wear on anything it runs through or over such as pipes,
riverbeds, pinstocks, water wheels, etc. Some other concerns are its
temperature characteristics (it freezes in the northern latitudes, and turns to
steam at 1000 Celsius) and its fluidity (we can't just grab a chunk of it and move
it, they have to make containers and pipes and stuff to make it go where we
need it).
Objective #6Q: Can removing salt from seawater solve
our water supply problem?
•
A: Removing salt from seawater would definitely solve our water supply
problems, but the technology to do so would require so much energy that we’d be
putting more into doing it then we would get out of it.
Objective #7
• Q: How can we waste less water?
A: By Installing water-saving shower
heads and low-flow faucet aerators,
insulating your water pipes, and
things as easy as turning off your
faucet after you wet your
toothbrush.
Objective #8
• Q: How can we use the earth’s water more
sustainably?
A: We can sustain earth’s water by using
dishwashers and clothes washers for only full
loads, keeping a bottle of drinking water in the
fridge instead of waiting for faucet water to cool,
and by minimizing the use of garbage disposal
units.
Objective #9
• Q: What causes flooding, and what can we do
about it?
A:
Floods can occur in rivers, when flow exceeds the capacity of the
river channel, particularly at bends or meanders. We can prevent this
by the creation of flood plains and winding streams to hinder the
accumulation of water
desalination
• Purification of salt water or brackish (slightly
salty) water by removal of dissolved salts.
drought
• Condition in which an area does not get
enough water because of lower-than-normal
precipitation or higher-than-normal
temperatures that increase evaporation.
evaporation
• Conversion of a liquid into a gas
floodplain
• Flat valley floor next to a stream channel. For
legal purposes, the term often applies to any
low area that has the potential for flooding,
including certain coastal areas.
groundwater
• Water that sinks into the soil and is stored in
slowly flowing and slowly renewed
underground reservoirs called aquifers;
underground water in the zone of saturation,
below the water table. Compare runoff,
surface water.
natural recharge
• Natural replenishment of an aquifer by
precipitation, which percolates downward
through soil and rock.
recharge area
• Any area of land allowing water to pass
through it and into an aquifer.
reliable runoff
• Surface runoff of water that generally can be
counted on as a stable source of water from
year to year.
saltwater intrusion
• Movement of salt water into freshwater
aquifers in coastal and inland areas as
groundwater is withdrawn faster than it is
recharged by precipitation.
stream
• Flowing body of surface water
subsidence
• Slow or rapid sinking of part of the earth's
crust that is not slope-related.
surface runoff
• Water flowing off the land into bodies of
surface water.
surface water
• Precipitation that does not infiltrate the
ground or return to the atmosphere by
evaporation or transpiration.
water table
• Upper surface of the zone of saturation, in
which all available pores in the soil and rock in
the earth's crust are filled with water.
watershed
• Land area that delivers water, sediment, and
dissolved substances via small streams to a
major stream (river).
zone of aeration
• Zone in soil that is not saturated with water
and that lies above the water table. See water
table, zone of saturation.
zone of saturation
• Area where all available pores in soil and rock
in the earth's crust are filled by water.